Your iPhone may soon be able to detect bad breath, if an upcoming smell sensor proves to be a success.

IBM's recent list of upcoming technical innovations has already hinted at a future of 'Cognitive Systems' that adapt and experience the world as it really is, and focus on the human senses: sight, smell, touch, taste and hearing.

That future could be closer than we thought, with San Francisco startup Adamant Technologies planning to launch a consumer device that will plug into an iPhone to detect smells.

The company's founder and CEO Sam Khamis told Business Insider that it has created a computer chip that uses tiny sensor to "take the sense of smell and taste and digitize them."

Khamis explained that Adamant's new technology has a more sophisticated sense of smell than a human, with 2,000 sensors in comparison to about 400 in the average human nose. Adamant's sense of smell is about as good as a dog's, Khamis said.

The device will be compatible with several apps, including one that can detect y our smelly breath.

"Halitosis, or bad breath tracking, is something we're really interested in," Khamis said. The app will even be able to tell you what caused the smell, he claims.

Other apps in the works at Adamant are realtime metabolic tracking that can inform you how many calories you're burning, as well as a breathalyser that can monitor conditions such as diabetes, or test blood alchohol.

But it could be a couple of years before we see these apps hitting the iOS App Store, with the Adamant's chips in the very beginning stages of mass production in Texas.